Corporate preferences for biodiversity investment: Evidence from a discrete choice experiment among medium and large European firms

The deepening biodiversity crisis has turned attention to the role of private capital in conservation finance, as policymakers seek scalable solutions beyond public funding. Yet, empirical insights into corporate decision-making on biodiversity investment remain limited, even though understanding such microlevel behavior helps inform the design of more effective biodiversity policies and investment mechanisms. We conduct a discrete choice experiment with 418 decision-makers from medium and large firms across Europe, applying a mixed logit model to identify firms' preferences for project characteristics and cross-firm variation in those preferences. Results reveal a clear preference for investment over inaction, particularly among firms in carbon-intensive sectors, those led by environmentally informed executives, and those with favorable attitudes, reflecting perceived business relevance and expected benefits. Firms favor domestic projects, or projects located within Europe, and respond positively to both government and third-party certification, though regional variation exists. Firms also prefer to align biodiversity investments with their sourcing geographies. While the findings should be treated with caution, as they are based on a limited subsample of corporate decision makers, they suggest that policy instruments aiming to scale up private biodiversity investments should prioritize credible certification schemes and support regionally anchored projects.